Apocalypse: Every Woman I Invest In Makes Me Stronger

From the darkened mouth of the cross alley, a pack of ten ordinary zombies surged into the weak morning sunlight.

Their decaying bodies were gaunt and hideous, gray skin stretched tight over rotten bone. Patches of greasy, coagulated blood caked their jaws, and shreds of tattered, filthy clothing hung from their hunched shoulders. The moment their milk-white, cataracts-filmed eyes caught sight of living flesh, an eerie, guttural hunger tore from their rotting throats.

They broke into an uneven, frantic charge, their gangly limbs pumping as they threw themselves toward the three women.

Behind the fractured brick wall fifty meters away, Ethan remained completely stationary.

He lowered his raised hand, keeping his presence thoroughly concealed behind the masonry. He had zero intention of playing the reckless savior immediately. Penny had defied his direct orders, leading untrained civilians out into an active death zone. If she had grown confident enough to believe the apocalyptic wasteland was merely an open-air supermarket where she could play the heroine, a baptism of blood was the only lesson that would drill reality into her skull.

He would watch how they fared. If Penny possessed the combat awareness and grit to back up her recklessness, fine. If they were about to be ripped apart, he could intervene at the final second.

At the mouth of the alley, Penny gasped, her boots skidding backward across the gravel.

Raw panic flashed across her youthful features for a split second as the rotting pack bore down on her, the nauseating stench of putrefaction rolling over her in a suffocating wave. But instead of turning and fleeing, she bit down hard on her lower lip until the sting brought her focus back.

”Stay behind me! Don’t run!” Penny yelled, planting her lead foot into the dirt.

She pushed off the pavement, her spiritual sea flaring to life.

A brilliant burst of golden-white luminescence erupted behind her shoulder blades. With a sharp, crystalline hum, a pair of translucent, radiant Light Wings unfolded from her back, their feathers woven from pure, condensed photons. Beating them down with a sharp rush of wind, her body shot forward with astonishing agility, closing the distance before the lead zombie could raise its claws.

Her right hand blurred.

Several three-inch, razor-sharp Light Blades condensed around her fingertips, glowing with blinding intensity.

The lead zombie lunged forward, snapping yellowed fangs toward her face. Penny twisted her torso mid-stride with remarkable grace, slipping beneath the rotting reach by inches, and whipped her right arm upward in a rising diagonal arc.

A clean, searing crescent of white light severed the morning air.

The zombie’s head tilted sideways at an unnatural angle, separated neatly from its neck before its knees buckled. A spray of blackish-green, foul fluid erupted outward, splattering across Penny’s jeans and boots, but she didn’t even flinch.

Before the first corpse hit the asphalt, a second zombie rushed her from the left flank, swinging a broken concrete block.

Penny beat her luminous wings violently, vaulting two meters straight into the air. Inverting her momentum with a sharp midair turn, she swept her left hand down, driving a condensed Light Blade directly through the crown of its skull.

The blade pierced clean through, frying the creature’s putrid brain matter in an instant. The creature dropped lifelessly to the pavement.

Two more zombies charged simultaneously, closing the gap from both flanks.

Penny landed lightly on the broken curb, her chest heaving as the physical exertion began to demand its price. Her brow was already slick with a sheen of sweat. Yet her eyes were blazing with fierce, desperate determination.

She darted between the outstretched, clawed hands, her Light Wings fluttering in rapid bursts to pivot her body through the narrowest gaps. Her strikes grew slightly wilder, lacking the clean efficiency of the first two kills, but her speed made up for the deficit. One blade sheared through a zombie’s shoulder down to its collarbone; a follow-up slash cleanly severed its rotting throat.

Behind her, huddled against the graffiti-covered brick wall of the convenience store, Susan and Linda were shivering violently.

Both women held their scavenged iron pipes with two white-knuckled hands, their faces completely drained of color. Their legs shook so violently they could barely remain upright. Despite Penny fighting desperately mere feet in front of them, neither woman took a single step forward to assist.

Penny drove her machete through the ribcage of the sixth zombie and kicked it away, her breath coming in ragged, audible gasps.

”Come on! Hit them!” Penny screamed over her shoulder, wiping sweat and dirty hair from her forehead with a bloody forearm. ”Don’t just stand there! Help me hold the line!”

Susan flinched at the shout, glancing at Linda with wild, terrified eyes.

Spurred by pure survival panic, Susan raised her iron pipe awkwardly above her head, taking two stumbling steps forward. Linda followed suit, swinging her rod blindly toward an approaching zombie that was stumbling toward Penny’s flank.

Linda’s swing was wide, missing the target’s head entirely and striking empty air. Susan’s rusted pipe connected with a dull thud against the creature’s decaying shoulder, but without proper kinetic leverage, the strike barely slowed its momentum.

The zombie didn’t even register the impact; it simply snarled, its bloodshot eyes locking onto Susan’s throat as it lunged.

Susan shrieked, dropping her iron pipe with a loud clatter and tumbling backward onto her hands and knees.

Before the beast’s jaws could close on the woman’s neck, Penny flashed across the concrete. Her Light Wings battered the creature’s chest, throwing it off balance, while her machete cleaved straight through its neck, decapitating it in a spray of dark fluid.

The skirmish dragged on for several grueling minutes.

One by one, Penny hacked, slashed, and burned through the remainder of the pack through sheer stubborn grit.

When the tenth and final zombie collapsed into an unmoving heap on the cracked asphalt, Penny’s knees gave out.

She slumped against the edge of a crushed sedan, her Light Wings flickering once, twice, before dissolving into faint white embers that vanished into the morning air. Her chest rose and fell in heavy, shuddering gasps, sweat dripping from her chin onto her blood-drenched shirt.

Yet despite the exhaustion rattling her limbs, a radiant, triumphant smile spread across her flushed face.

”I did it...” Penny breathed out, laughing softly between gasps of air. ”I actually took down a whole horde by myself!”

Her eyes sparkled with sheer, unadulterated pride. A month ago, she had been a fragile survivor trembling in the dark; now, she had stood her ground and cleared an alley full of horrors.

Behind the distant wall, Ethan watched her in silence, offering a faint, approving nod in the shadows.

Her combat instincts were undeniably improving. Her flight transitions were faster, her aerial recovery was stabilizing, and the cutting edge of her Light Blades carried genuine lethal force. With enough resources and pressure, she had the foundation to grow into a truly formidable combatant.

Unfortunately, the ruins never granted respite to the proud.

Before Ethan could step out to reprimand her, an ominous, guttural screech tore through the upper levels of the alley.

Penny’s smile froze.

At the far end of the narrow street, stepping out from the shadowed lobby of a bank, five more figures emerged.

Four were ordinary, shambling infected.

The fifth was a nightmare born of high-tier mutation.

Its muscular, two-meter frame was coated in slick, blue-gray scales rather than rotting skin. Protruding from its broad shoulder blades were two massive, leathery wings woven from thick red flesh and exposed bone spurs. Its elongated, double-jointed fingers tapered into hooked, black talons, and its sunken eye sockets burned with an unsettling, predatory intelligence.

An Elite-Level Evolved Zombie possessing flight.

The beast threw back its disfigured head, unleashing a high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek that shattered the remaining windows along the street.

Flap! Flap!

With several violent, concussive beats of its leathery red wings, the monster launched itself into the air, circling twenty meters above the alley like an oversized vulture locking onto its prey.

The blood drained from Penny’s face in an instant.

”No... no, no...” she stammered, scrambling backward on her hands.

Her spiritual pool was practically dry. She had burned through seventy percent of her core fighting ten ordinary zombies; conjuring her wings now felt like trying to lift an iron anvil with frayed thread.

The flying abomination folded its leathery red wings and plummeted downward like a falling boulder.

A rancid, suffocating stench of decayed meat rolled ahead of its descent. Penny barely managed to throw herself sideways across the asphalt. The monster’s razor-sharp talons raked through the empty space where her chest had been a fraction of a second prior, tearing deep, smoking gouges into the solid pavement.

Penny rolled across the gravel, gritting her teeth as she forced a thin, trembling Light Blade to coalesce around her fingers. She flung it with all her might toward the creature’s spine.

Clang!

The blade struck the blue-gray scales, but instead of cleaving the spine, it merely left a shallow, scorched scratch before shattering into sparks.

The Elite zombie didn’t even flinch. It wheeled around in the air, its wings snapping wide to catch the morning thermal, its crimson gaze locking back onto Penny’s trembling frame.

Desperation clawed at Penny’s chest.

”Susan! Linda! Help me!” Penny screamed toward the wall, her voice cracking with terror. ”Distract it for three seconds! Please!”

A few meters away, Susan and Linda stood frozen.

They looked at the massive flying abomination circling above them, and then looked down at Penny, who was pinned against the car, exhausted and defenseless.

The two women exchanged a single, panicked glance.

Without uttering a single word, Susan gripped her iron pipe, swung it wildly to batter aside one of the ordinary zombies blocking the escape route, and bolted toward the main boulevard. Linda dropped her weapon entirely and sprinted directly behind her.

They didn’t look back. Not once.

”Susan! Linda!”

Penny stared at their fleeing backs in stunned, absolute disbelief, her voice echoing pathetically against the concrete walls.

”You can’t just leave me here! I fought for you!”

The two women turned the corner of the cross street and disappeared from sight, abandoning her to the slaughter.

Hot, bitter tears of betrayal welled up in Penny’s eyes, blurring her vision. She had defied Ethan, risked her life, and burned her spiritual reserves to keep them safe, only to be tossed to the monsters the second her utility expired.

A deafening roar snapped her back to reality.

The Elite flying zombie had reached the apex of its dive. Folding its red wings tightly against its flanks, it dove straight toward her face like a guided missile, its black talons extended to rip her throat out.

Penny tried desperately to raise her hand, but her spiritual sea was an absolute void. Her limbs felt like solid lead, completely refusing to obey her commands.

The creature’s hooked claws filled her vision. The foul heat of its rotten breath washed across her cheeks.

It’s over...

Penny squeezed her eyes shut, pulling her head down as she surrendered to the dark.

In that final, frozen microsecond before death, the chaotic memories of her life flickered through her mind in rapid succession.

She saw the bright, warm smile of her sister Maya from the days before the sky turned red.

And then, dominating every other thought, the image of Ethan materialized in her heart. She saw his calm, unyielding expression, the quiet strength in his eyes, the warmth of the shelter he had built, and the food he had given her when she was starving.

A profound, suffocating wave of regret crushed her chest.

Ethan... I was too scared to say it...

Her lips trembled in the cold wind of the diving monster.

”Ethan... I really like you...”

She braced for the sickening tear of steel talons piercing through her flesh.

CRACK!

A sharp, deafening sound~like the instantaneous snapping of a thunderbolt inside an iron vault~shattered the morning air.

Yet there was no pain. No claws sinking into her throat. No blood pouring over her skin.

Penny’s eyelids fluttered open, shivering violently.

Standing directly in front of her, towering between her fragile frame and the empty sky, was a broad, familiar back clad in dark combat gear.

Ethan.

He stood casually with his right hand half-raised, looking down at the pavement with a detached, bored expression, as though he had merely stepped out to brush away an annoying fly.

Beside his boots lay the twisted, grotesque corpse of the Elite flying zombie. Its massive, scaled skull had been imploded from the inside out, completely caved in and pulverized into gray mush by the violent, localized collapse of three-dimensional space.

A faint, thread-like distortion of spatial ripples was slowly dissipating around Ethan’s fingertips.

Space Fissure.

The creature had been obliterated before its nervous system could even register that its target was dead.